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Thursday, 18 May 2017

Putting the Unseakable on Display

Today is International
Museum Day. This year’s theme is “Museums and Contested Histories: Saying the
Unspeakable in Museums”. To quote from the Museum Day website “… museums play a
vital role in peacefully addressing traumatic histories – while still sharing
knowledge of the past and giving it meaning to help us understand the world
today. Museums therefore become tools for teaching universal values and help
create a common destiny among different, peaceful geopolitical spaces.”There can hardly be any
more contested histories than that of the lgbt community. Even as I speak the
plight of lgbt individuals in Chechnya is causing alarm. Not only do some
people refuse to give the community a voice but some take measures to eradicate
it.It would have been
inconceivable to produce any public historical display of lgbt heritage before the
1960s. Even today there is a reluctance on the part of lgbt historians and
academics in the UK to take an active lead in establishing an lgbt museum. It
has always been talk and no action, and that talk is predominantly negative,
more excuses on why such a museum can’t be created instead of reasons why one
can.In other parts of the
world similar museums have had varying degrees of success. Below I’ve selected
some of the successes and failures of museums around the world. These will
include some museums also dedicated to sex and AIDS as these are also
considered “unspeakable” and “contested” themes and the lgbt community cannot
be separated from them. I’ve deliberately selected only one museum for each
continent, except Antarctica.

We’ll begin with what is
usually referred to as the first gay museum, 1) the Schwules Museum in Berlin. Like a lot of other lgbt
museums around the world this German museum was inspired by a one-off
exhibition. In 1984 Berlin Museum mounted an lgbt exhibition called
"Eldorado". The following year, due to its success, the Schwules
Museum opened above a popular gay night club. The museum moved to its present
location in 2013. The original emphasis was on the history of male
homosexuality in Germany. In 2009 the museum received a grant from the Berlin
Senate to enable expansion of its collection to include other sexual and gender
identities.There does not seem to
have been any attempt to create an lgbt museum in Africa. However, in South
Africa a museum has been created dedicated to the history of AIDS on the
continent, 2) The Museum of AIDS in
Africa.The idea of an AIDS
museum seems first to have been developed in 2004 in New Jersey and there is
one currently in Florida. So much had been learnt about the origin and spread
of HIV, and many huge advances in medical science that has helped us deal with
it and understand it, that it became clear that in just a few short decades
disease had generated its own history and legacy.The Museum of AIDS in
Africa was founded in 2012. The original aim was to build up a collection of
artefacts and a series of travelling exhibitions in a permanent home in South
Africa. Johannesburg and Durban have both been considered. It came about
through the work of Stephanie Nolen, a foreign correspondent on a Canadian
newspaper. She covered the HIV and AIDS news in Africa between 2003 and 2008
and realised that there was a lot of misinformation and propaganda. Some tribes
believed it was either witchcraft or a curse from their ancestors.The physical museum of
which Stephanie Nolen first dreamed has not yet been achieved, but last year a
specially designed travelling exhibition venue, a pop-up building, was designed
and, it is hoped, this will become a “permanent” travelling museum of AIDS in
Africa.An earlier museum which
included the history and information about AIDS was the 3) Antarang Museum – the Museum of Sex, or Sex health
Information Art Gallery, which opened in India in 2002. It was created in
Bombay/Mumbai is response to the increase of AIDS cases in the city. It was a
joint venture between its founder Dr. Prakash Sarang, the Greater Mumbai
Municipal Corporation and the Mumbai District AIDS Control Society. Initially
the museum attracted a lot of media attention due to the general subject matter
of sex education. Its main visitor base graduated into local prostitutes and
their clients, and Dr Sarang expressed a hope that the museum would be better
received in Goa. The museum went into a kind of limbo in 2007, closing down due
to structural problems and lack of funds. It was virtually abandoned by its
original creators, except Dr Sarang. Its future, if it has one, is not certain.We move across to South
America now. With São Paulo having some of the biggest lgbt Pride parades in
the world it is natural that the city should house the only lgbt museum in
Latin America. Celebrating its 5th anniversary this month is the 4) Museu da Diversidade Sexual
(Museum of Sexual Diversity). It was created in May 2012 by São Paulo state’s
Culture Secretariat. It currently occupies a large space in the mezzanine floor
of the city’s Metro Republica subway station in one of the city’s public parks.
There were plans to move it to a larger, more impressive, site – a 112-year-old
mansion house in the city centre. Designs for a new annexe with library,
auditorium, café and gift shop were approved in 2014 but nothing seems to have
been done. There were even suggestions that Elton John would be invited to
perform the official opening. However, it remain a very popular museum and
exhibition space.Australia, and 5) Sydney in particular, also seems
to be the perfect place for an lgbt museum with its vibrant community and
highly successful annual Mardi Gras. There have been several exhibitions in
Sydney’s museum and art gallery and the idea of a permanent lgbt museum gained
a lot of support after the 2013 Mardi Gras when a pop-up lgbt museum was
created by the organising committee with the help of $40,000 from the city
council. Impetus gathered after the suggestion of a permanent museum was raised
in city council meetings. A venue was ear-marked but the council leader wasn’t
enthusiastic. Finally, in 2014 the whole idea was dropped. The Mardi Gras
committee admitted that the selected site would have cost them too much money
and opted for more pop-up museums in the future.In the next few weeks the 6) Stonewall National Museum and
Archives is likely to see an increase in visitor numbers. Don’t be
fooled by the name Stonewall. This museum isn’t in New York where the famous
Stonewall Inn is located but is in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. The reason it
may become popular for a few weeks is because the 4th World Outgames are being
held next week just down the coast in Miami. The Stonewall National Museum was
founded by Mark Silber in 1973. In 2009 the museum moved to its present site on
East Sunrise Boulevard.So, those are some of the
lgbt museums that have been created or considered. They illustrate the
successes and pitfalls of establishing a museum dedicated to a subject that is
still quite controversial, in museum terms. I’d like to finish with the words
of Gerard Koskovich, a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society and
Museum in San Francisco, which with the Schwules Museum and the Museu da
Diversidade Sexual comprise the most successful of lgbt museums – “By
critically representing the stories of lgbt history in the setting of a museum,
we not only create a foundation for greater social acceptance today, we also
help open the way of LGBT and non-LGBT people alike to imagine a future of
greater dignity and equality”.

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About Me

I was born during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960 and was brought up in a village in north Nottinghamshire. I attended the sort of school which practiced “history for girls, geography for boys”, but developed a love of history none-the-less.